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One striking difference between the Israeli state books on the one hand, and the ultra-Orthodox and Palestinian books on the other, is their willingness to engage in self-criticism. For the Israelis, this is an evolution that began in the late 1990s, after many historians began to re-evaluate early Israeli history, and a left-wing member of the Knesset became education minister. Israeli state textbooks began to admit that some Palestinians left their land within Israel because they were expelled. And they began to make reference to the Arabic name for Israel’s War of Independence in 1948: the Naqba, or Catastrophe. They also began ask Israeli Jewish students how they would have felt about Zionism if they’d been in the place of the Palestinians. There is still far less of this in either the ultra-Orthodox or Palestinian books. For example, the Palestinian texts don’t deal in any significant way with the Holocaust or its relationship to the founding of Israel.

just how politicized the teaching of history and geography has become for Israelis and Palestinians—with both sides at times quite literally wiping each other off the map. Not that Israelis and Palestinians are alone on this score. Think of Cyprus, where for decades Greek and Turk Cypriotes did not consider themselves part of a single people, or Northern Ireland, where even the name used to describe the territory continues to be highly charged. (Is it a province? A state? A region?) The process of ending such misrepresentations, the authors of the study find, is therefore “exceedingly difficult and requires deliberate and courageous effort.” It also takes time.

Palestinian textbooks are still in their first generation

Sociologist Sammy Smooha of Haifa University, who conducts an annual survey of Arab and Jewish relations, says that the goal now should be to write textbooks that do more to expose each side to the other’s narrative. “You have to engage with the other side’s arguments in a serious manner and not just build up a straw man in order to break it.” Eyal Naveh, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University and the author of several textbooks for middle-school and high-school students, agrees. “If you ignore it, it’s as if it doesn’t exist,” he said.

a book called Side By Side that included a “dual narrative” of all major events in the region since 1917, through the Second Intifada in 2000. Naveh calls the book “a successful failure:” Though it had been lauded by the international press and continues to sell abroad, the book was banned by both the Israeli and Palestinian education ministries. Naveh now believes that getting such a textbook to become part of the Israeli and Palestinian curricula is “impossible.”

Among the 1930s cultural and intellectual figures given place of pride are Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso and John Steinbeck. Guernica is reproduced in an inset about Picasso, illustrating the artist’s hatred of war. (47) A lengthy excerpt from the Grapes of Wrath concludes with Steinbeck’s denunciation of depression-era America: “And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment.”

The book places added emphasis on the harsh terms imposed on Germany at Versailles. Prefiguring the later treatment of Al Qaeda terrorism, the intention appears not so much to justify Nazism, but rather to present injustice as the causal force behind violence and cruelty in world politics.

the Holocaust instead appears here as one among several examples of Western barbarity

The foundation of the UN is immediately followed by a discussion of Israel under the heading “Imperial Powers in the Remaking of the Middle East.” (80-81) The Palestine problem, students learn, is the principal cause of conflict in the region. It began when the Ottoman Empire, “the biggest obstacle to the foundation of a Jewish state,” grew weak, leading to the creation of Israel.

Next comes a discussion of the post-war financial order and the International Monetary Fund. Students learn that “the IMF’s standard formula, which recommends austerity policies for countries in economic crises, generally results in failure, chaos and social unrest.” (81-83) An excerpt, which students are then asked to discuss, explains how the IMF prescribes different policies for developed and developing countries.

only in the context of the Cold War origins of the EU does the book engage in any explicitly religious clash-of-civilizations style rhetoric. The idea of European unity is traced back to the Crusades, while a quote about the centrality of Christianity to European identity appears under a dramatic picture of Pope Francis standing with European leaders. (112) The next page states that the EU’s treatment of Turkey’s candidacy, coupled with the fact that “all the countries within it were Christian” had “raised questions” about the EU’s identity.

Early Cold War era decolonization also provides an opportunity to celebrate Atatürk’s role as an anti-imperialist hero for Muslims and the entire Third World. (122-123) “Turkey’s national struggle against imperialism in Anatolia struck the first great blow against imperialism in the 20th century,” the authors write. “Mustafa Kemal, with his role in the War of Independence and his political, economic, social and cultural revolutions after it, served as an example for underdeveloped and colonized nations.” Atatürk himself is quoted as saying, in 1922, that “what we are defending is the cause of all Eastern nations, of all oppressed nations.” Thus, the book explains that “the success of the national struggle brought joy to the entire colonized Islamic world, and served as a source of inspiration to members of other faiths.” The section ends with quotes from leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and Habib Bourguiba about how Atatürk inspired them in their own anti-imperial struggles or was simply, in Nehru’s words, “my hero.” An accompanying graphic shows Atatürk’s image superimposed over a map with arrows pointing to all the countries, from Algeria to Indonesia, whose revolutions were supposedly influenced by Turkey’s War of Independence.

Amidst the polarization of the Erdoğan era, what is striking in this book is the authors’ efforts to weave together the conflicting strands of Turkish political history into a coherent narrative. Illustrating Ernst Renan’s argument about the role of forgetting in nation-building, this account glosses over the depth of the divisions and hostility between rival historical actors, presenting them as all working side by side toward a common national goal

The authors also offer a balanced treatment of the fraught domestic politics during the period from 1945 to 1960 when Turkey held its first democratic election and experienced its first coup. (138-142, 144-146) They focus their criticism on the negative impact of U.S. aid, arguing that Washington intentionally sought to make Turkey economically and politically dependent, then sponsored a coup when these efforts were threatened.

The narrative of national independence also helps smooth over Turkey’s Cold War domestic divides. Students are introduced to the ‘68 Generation and left-wing leaders likes Deniz Gezmiş as anti-imperialists protesting against the U.S. Sixth Fleet in support of a fully independent Turkey. (185-186)[9] In this context, Baskin Oran’s work is again cited, this time quoting Uğur Mumcu on the role of “dark forces,” presumably the CIA, in laying the groundwork for Turkey’s 1971 coup.

The book also offers a relatively neutral treatment of political activism during the ensuing decade, suggesting that rival ideological movements were all good faith responses to the country’s challenges. On this, the authors quote Kemal Karpat: “Both right and left wing ideologies sought to develop an explanation for social phenomena and a perspective on the future. A person’s choice of one of these ideologies was generally the result of chance or circumstance.” (202) Thus the authors imply that while foreign powers provoked or exploited these movements, the individual citizens who participated in them can be given the benefit of the doubt. Interestingly, the book takes a similar approach in discussing the 2013 Gezi protests: “If various financial interests and foreign intelligence agencies had a role in the Gezi Park events, a majority of the activists were unaware of it and joined these protests of their own will.”

Turkey’s real struggle in the 21st century, as in the 20th, is against dependence on foreign technology

a book which begins with a portrait of Atatürk ends with a photo of the Bayraktar TB2.

the book’s biases are less in the realm of wild distortion and more reminiscent of those that plague ideologically infused nationalistic history education in all too many countries

its exaggerated critique of European imperialism may be no more misleading than the whitewashing still found in some European textbooks

At moments, Contemporary Turkish and World History is better aligned with recent left-leaning scholarship than the patriotic accounts many Americans grew up reading as well

Selçuk Bayraktar, the architect of Turkey’s drone program, said that as a student “I was obsessed with Noam Chomsky.” [16] During the 1980s and 90s, America sold Ankara F-16 jets and Sikorsky helicopters that were used to wage a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in southeast Anatolia. No one was more critical of this than left-wing scholars like Chomsky.[17] Now, Ankara is selling Bayraktar drones to Ethiopia, where they are being used to kill civilians and destroy schools in another violent civil war.

Turkey’s marriage of power projection and anti-colonial critique have been particularly visible – and effective – in Africa. Ankara has presented itself as an “emancipatory actor,” while providing humanitarian aid, establishing military bases, selling weapons across the continent.[13] In doing so, Turkish leaders have faced some of the same contradictions as previous emancipatory actors. In August 2020, for example, members of Mali’s military overthrew a president with whom Erdoğan enjoyed good relations. Ankara expressed its “sorrow” and “deep concern.”[14] Then, a month later, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu became the first foreign official to meet with the country’s new military leaders. “Like a brother,” he “sincerely shared” his hopes for a smooth “transition process” back to democracy

Throughout the 20th century, America defined itself as the world’s premier anti-imperialist power, all while gradually reproducing many of the elements that had defined previous empires.[11] Today, it often seems that Turkey’s aspirations for great power status reflect the facets of 20th century American power it has condemned most vigorously

certain themes dominate Contemporary Turkish and World History. At the center of its narrative is the struggle for global hegemony, in military, economic, technological and artistic terms

In his book, al-Jazari explained the construction of his devices and automatons, from water-raising machines to fountains, complete with illustrations and instructions that gave engineers the opportunity to reuse them. 

his masterwork, The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices,

The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices,  was the most important work of engineering written before the Renaissance centuries later. 

“The idea of having robots to do humans work - or simply automation - was developed by al-Jazari 250 years before Leonardo Da Vinci, with some excellent examples."

in the 21st century Muslim countries see relatively less scientific activity. According to the World Bank, in 2016 the United States and the European Union respectively published 426,165 and 613,774 articles in scientific and technical journals. That compares to 40,974 in Iran and 33,902 in Turkey, although the number of articles is rising.

Published in the first few months after the 2011 uprising, Ben Mhenni’s book is the most euphoric of the four testimonies. Much of the narrative is a celebration of the power of cyber dissidence, which Ben Mhenni defines as a combination of citizen journalism (blogging and filming events) and on-the-ground activism

While acknowledging how her parents’ history of resistance as members of the UGTT prepared her for a life of activism, Ben Mhenni attributes much of her political development to the “real-world” friendships she established with cyber dissidents in the Tunisian blogosphere.

This testimony is more chronological and personal than Ben Mhenni’s. It constructs the author’s life teleologically as a journey from bourgeois indifference in suburbia to grassroots activism in the country’s downtrodden interior. It also documents Ben Mbarek’s co-founding of the civil rights network, Dostourna, which marked her renewed faith in “the power of citizens.”

Like Ben Mhenni, Ben Mbarek celebrates the politicizing power of social media, crediting Facebook for encouraging the rise of citizen journalism, which sparked her political (re)awakening. As she argues, it was thanks to citizen journalists from besieged cities that she finally felt connected to the leftist cause long championed by her father.

Convinced that the stultifying bureaucracy of political parties made them incapable of meeting the demands of the leaderless Arab Spring revolt, Ben Mbarek sought to create autonomous regional cells of civil rights activists throughout the country. Their job would be to address each region’s specific political needs

As a professor of philosophy, Belhaj Yahia champions the values of the Enlightenment and believes in the vital importance of dialogue. Accordingly, her text probes the origins of the discord between Islamists and secularists, in order to understand the tensions marking the post-Ben Ali period

she analyzes the “schizophrenic” discourses of her diasporic family members and the “narcissistic wounds” of old dissidents, who are now mimicking Ben Ali’s authoritarianism. She also critiques the regional and class disparities perpetrated by the old regime

Belhaj Yahia believes she is the product of a moderate and worldly national education, which is currently under threat in Tunisia. She locates this threat in the state’s gradual abandonment of public education and the resurgence of conservative ideologies

Her book ends with a call for other Tunisians to publish their own self-reflections, in the belief that writing and reading autobiographical accounts can pave the way for more understanding between the different factions comprising Tunisian society.

Fakhfakh’s book is a fictionalized diary written between January 14, 2011, the day of Ben Ali’s ouster, and May 18, 2015

Each diary entry is comprised of two parts. The first part is a summary of national and regional events with a brief commentary from the author; the second part is a biography of a pioneering Tunisian woman

As the author notes throughout the book, state attempts to propagate an institutional-form of feminism have devalued women’s history

The author worries that women’s achievements are constantly erased, in order to accommodate the ego of male leaders, like Bourguiba. She is also concerned that the rise of political Islam may eventually obscure Tunisian women’s “legacy of freedom” even further

Fakhfakh embraces the narrative of “Tunisian exceptionalism,” in which Tunisian women are presented as the most progressive in the Arab and Islamic world. This nationalist mythology about Tunisian women is common, even among Tunisian intellectuals, and is used as a means of differentiating and elevating Tunisian women above Arab and Muslim women more broadly. The inherent divisiveness of this narrative is problematic, and is left unexamined in Fakhfakh’s book

Anti-Israel sentiment is still strong on a popular level, and for obvious good reason. The slow but gradual positive restoration of Jews back into the Egyptian imaginary shows that the fruits of the Arab Spring cannot always be measured in election victories and constitutions.

“They may want to publish books in a’amiya, but they also want to sell into as large a market as possible. This means being able to sell across borders, particularly into wealthier Gulf countries, but it also means selling to schools and libraries. Generally, it's only the books entirely in Fusha that are seen as ‘properly’ educational.”

"I had to read the story in Fusha in my head, each page, and then translate it into colloquial Arabic so that she understood the spoken Arabic words. It really bothered me. It didn't feel natural. It cut the flow for me and for her.” 

The couple set up a publishing house they named Ossass Stories (Ossass means "stories" in Levantine dialect), learning the trade from scratch and financing it themselves. Makhoul would work by day as a journalist and then research the publishing industry by night, drawing up cost analyses and searching for illustrators and distribution outlets. 

The problem with reading material for very young children learning Arabic is universal. But the lack of age-appropriate learning resources is felt more keenly by parents raising their children outside the region.

“If it's nursery rhymes and cartoons, and things like that, they’re all dubbed into Standard Arabic, it's very frustrating.”

“The problem is Standard Arabic isn't spoken anywhere.” Khalil says. “It's an ideological or theoretical standard. And so that's where linguistically the problems occur and pedagogically, as well. You're kind of creating artificial material and scenarios.”

I'm not saying we should do a'amiya [spoken Arabic] forever for everyone. I'm just saying for the little ones

With all this rich, Maghrebi and Middle Eastern culture, aesthetic and historical references on display, once again I must ask: where are the significant MENA actors?

What an opportunity it would have been to cast the likes of Egyptian actor Amr Waked or French-Algerian actress Lyna Khoudri in these roles. Instead, we get Javier Bardem doing whatever the Arab version of Blackface is.

The rest of the Fremen - those whose faces aren't masked and have speaking roles - are made up of actors of Guyanese, West or East African heritage. This wouldn’t be a problem at all if there were at least some MENA actors to reflect the diversity of that region which Villeunueve claims to care so much about and admitted to using as inspiration: “I feel true that I’m right in doing it this way. It feels authentic, it feels honest and true to the book.”

We’re used to being vilified, maligned or erased on screen. We’re used to having most of our representation in Hollywood limited to plane hijacking or suicide bombing or perverted sheikhs or refugees or having non-MENA actors replacing us in our own stories. Like Dwayne Johnson who is playing Black Adam, the first MENA superhero character to get his own solo movie. Can you imagine the outrage if The Rock was cast as Black Panther? Or Shang-Chi? People wouldn’t stand for it.

But in a post-9/11 world where Arabs and Islam are still considered too dangerous and foreign to pass the racial profiling in studio boardrooms and casting call discrimination, too taboo to be given the same equal opportunities for positive or nuanced representation as other ethnic minorities are now slowly beginning to benefit from, must we continue to wait and bittersweetly watch films like Dune that take but do not give back?

This helps us to understand why western analysts keep misreading the motivation behind Putin’s actions. His reality is very different from the reality in which these analysts live. His goal is primarily to “recollect Russia’s historical territories” (which specific version of historical Russia he has in mind is for us to rediscover in the next episodes)

the concept of cultural clash has been deeply ingrained in the minds of today’s Russians

Surveys show that 88 percent of Kiev’s Euromaidan participants came from outside of the capital. Of those only half originated from the country’s western regions, while the other half came from the central and eastern Ukraine. Specifically as many as one fifth (20 percent) of protesters came from the eastern regions alone

country-level data is also against the Ukrainian cultural divide concept. A survey from the Razumkov Center, shows that as of late December 2013 an absolute majority of the population in both the Center (two thirds) and West (80 percent) of Ukraine supported the Euromaidan; this is in contrast to about 20-30 percent in the East and South. However, the share of population that did not express support for the Euromaidan protests remained undecided regarding the alternative option: not supporting the Maidan did not automatically equal supporting the Russian vector or Yanukovych

the preponderance of pro-Russia oriented media in the Russian-speaking East

these media actively emphasized the cultural divide. If anything, the notorious divide exists primarily within Eastern Ukraine alone

Within Sisi’s approach to Islam, censorship remains key. In addition to going after the Muslim Brotherhood, he has locked up thousands of youth and other perceived dissidents. His brutal crackdown has ensnared over 40,000 prisoners of different political stripes. In the security-first mindset of the Sisi regime, writers and other dissidents pose a considerable threat: They have the ability to make the larger population question his policies

Fahmy is optimistic that the current repressive period is already creating burgeoning subversive spaces of critical resistance. “Within the readership there actually is a more healthy and critical reception of books and engagement with them [than before]. The reading public hasn’t expanded but deepened.”

Any image of cigarettes in movies aired on television must be blurred, even the smoke. The censored imagery has come to include drinks and bare female breasts. Subscription TV channels have also adopted the practice, blurring images of tobacco, alcohol, breasts and buttocks, despite their subscribers paying for a private service.

let's entertain the idea that Erdogan may be justified in associating smoking and drinking with literature, poetry and cinema in Turkey. Not so, according to scholars in the field.